1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to bar codes, specifically to identifying the bar code""s temperature range.
2. Discussion of Prior Art
Universal Product Code and Bar Code
The Universal Product Code (UPC) bar code was originally introduced in 1971, Uniform Code Council Internet publication at www.uc-council.org/ucchp.htm, to provide an efficient method of matching a product against a pricing file and recording a sale. When the bar codes were scanned at cash registers, the resultant transaction data was stored electronically. By using this transaction data, businesses could track their products"" sales and then market them accordingly. Prior bar code designs also include the European Article Number (EAN) and Japanese Article Number (JAN).
These bar codes all fail to resolve the need for tracking environmental conditions such as location and temperature. When the UPC was introduced in 1971, its scope was to communicate basic information from a main product file to an on-line transaction file. Storing the resultant transactional detail produced unmanageable file sizes. Computer systems of this generation were unable to store and process large transactional databases. These computer systems were unable to manage historical databases with only several fields data, making larger information gathering needs impracticable. Therefore, current applications of the UPC bar code data are limited by its original intention of only limited information retrieval.
Today, data from bar codes are now used by store-planning software to plot packaged goods products within a store. However, store-planning software was not invented until 1979. As space planners became sophisticated in their skill, it became apparent that UPC transaction data could identify product, price, and promotion but not absolute position. Product, price, promotion and position are called the Four P""s of Marketing and traditionally comprise the basic information about a product.
Certain items, such as soda, bottled water, juice, beer, and margarine can have two separate, simultaneous locations within a retail store. For example, beer can be located within a storage cooler and an adjacent floor display. To correctly plan supply, orders, and marketing, it is necessary to know from which of the two locations a particular product was sold. At present, marketers have to guess at pertinent questions:
How much did I sell from my normal selling space?
How much did I sell from the display?
How did this display effect the product""s promotion?
Thermochromic Materials
Thermochromic materials are substances which emit different colors at associated temperature ranges. Thermochromics have been used as active components in temperature-specification devices, as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,156,365 to Heinmets et al (1979), U.S. Pat. No. 5,144,112 to Wyatt et al. (1992), and U.S. Pat. No. 5,622,137 to Lupton, Jr. et al. (1997). Each of these patents requires a human operator to visually identify the material""s color and estimate its temperature accordingly. These inventions do not account for the different color-perception capabilities, or lack of color perception, among the general population.
Some thermochromic materials exhibit a one-time, permanent (quondam) change in color, as the one demonstrated in U.S. Pat. No. 5,622,137 to Lupton, Jr. et al. (1997), while other thermochromics are reversible, as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,558,700 to Shibahashi et al. (1996), and U.S. Pat. No. 5,480,482 to Novinson (1996).
Accordingly, the object of this invention is to provide an accurate method of establishing the temperature range of a product to which a bar code is attached. Several other objects and advantages of the present invention are:
(a) to provide a bar code that requires no hardware modifications of bar code readers;
(b) to provide a bar code that can establish a historical temperature range that marks product as unsalable;
(c) to provide a bar code that can be printed using current package printing technologies;
(d) to provide a bar code that will not significantly increase the price of the packaging;
(e) to provide a bar code that identifies the position from where the product was selected when the product has multiple locations;
(f) to provide a bar code that can contain two different codes;
(g) to provide a bar code that allows the temperature differences among a set, sample, or population of items to be efficiently identified.